Kaleidoscope

by J. Robert Janes

The workmanship was absolutely exquisite, the faceting of the bevelled engraving almost jewel-like. He imagined the dead woman sitting at one of those benches among such shabbiness with the others all around her waiting for her number to be called, so desperate for cash she had had to pawn this. Thirty-five thousand francs but worth at least between 140,000 and 250,000, if one could find a buyer, but why had it been so valuable?

  Delicately picking it up, he pointed it at the lamp, sucked in a breath, let out a little cry of delight and began at once to rotate the outermost end of the tube. Beautifully coloured and faceted platelets were thrown outwards. Reflected again and again by the simple system of mirrors, there were patterns such as he had never seen before. Ruby-reds and emerald-greens, topaz-blues and yellows, tourmaline in shades of red, green, blue, yellow and pink … diamonds … were there coloured diamonds as well?

  There was a range of nearly every colour from a deepest red that absorbed to the finest of pale pinks; the yellows from that of ripened flax to that of a golden wine, the blues, the greens varying the same, and clear, transparent pieces that drew the colours of the others yet stood out themselves when turned.

  A kaleidoscope like no other. A fabric designer’s piece of magic. A child’s toy but such a toy.

  He knew its owner had once been Viviane Darnot, for the weaver could never have resisted such a thing and would have been absolutely entranced by its patterns. He thought of Chamonix, of the wall hangings he had seen in that villa, her eyes reflected so many times in shards of mirrored glass.

  The octagonal patterns were everchanging as the outer end of the tube was turned, yet when the turning stopped, it was as if the particles fell in on themselves and the pattern remained stationary.

  The hallmark gave the name of the engraver: John S. Hunt of Hunt and Roskell, London, 1849. Viviane Darnot could well have received it from the father she seldom saw; in turn, she would have given it to the girl she loved.

  And that same girl, now a woman, had pawned the gift and done so when? he asked, examining the tag and recalling that her body had been found on the 16th, the Wednesday last.

  She had pawned the kaleidoscope on the previous Saturday, 12 December, at two forty-five in the afternoon.

  Had Jean-Paul informed the weaver of what her former lover and companion had done with her gift? Was that why Madame Buemondi had extended the ticket on that hillside and made not threats, ah no, but entreaties perhaps for forgiveness? I needed the money, chérie. I was desperate, she might have said. Josianne must have her medicine. The pilots must get across the Pyrenees and into safety so that they can fight again.

  But wait, he cautioned. Viviane Darnot is English. Then were they not both in on it, both helping the escapers until Angélique Girard came between the two women? Ah yes. The cloak had been given to another. The kaleidoscope had been pawned – a last straw, then. The weaver could tolerate no more. Wearing the cloak, she went into the hills and when Anne-Marie arrived, challenged her former lover and then shot her.

  Perhaps, but then … then … ah, it was such a case. They must get to Paris as quickly as possible and then return to those hills. That’s where the answers lay. The boy, Bébert Peretti, must be made to tell them what he witnessed on that hillside. The villagers, most particularly the herbalist and the hearse-driver, must be made to reveal what they knew. Somehow he had to keep Hermann from finding out about the maquis, if indeed there had ever been any of them.

  And Jean-Paul Delphane? he asked, still holding the kaleidoscope. Jean-Paul must be made to answer for his crimes.

  They were hurrying along the Quai des Corsaires through the fog, past half-timbered houses that had been built in the late 1500s perhaps. An old town, a once-bustling port the British had controlled from 1152 until 1451, Bayonne had fallen into decline for 200 years only to be revived by eighteenth-century privateers who had used it as a free port. Hence, the long tradition of taking the wealth of others? asked St-Cyr, snorting at the thought only to forget all about it.

  ‘Hermann, we must remember to ask the hearse-driver or the Abbé Roussel why Madame Buemondi denied the Borels their right to water, and when she did so.’

  Kohler flapped his wings in despair. ‘Dummkopf! It was the Perettis she threatened! The Borels’ oldest son was after the epileptic’s ass and Madame did not want him having it!’

  ‘Yes, yes, my friend, your crudeness is admirable, but the Borels? Why, if Ludo Borel and the weaver worked together on the plant dyes, did Madame Buemondi take away their right to water and when did she do so?’

  Louis could be such an idiot! Kohler stopped suddenly and turned to face him. ‘That woman was helping escapists, my fine. Whether she pissed away Borel’s water or not, simply doesn’t matter. She met a girl here, the daughter of a mountain guide, Louis, and she had the 35,000 francs to hand over.’

  ‘Ah no, a guide …? Why did you not tell me, Hermann?’

  ‘You were too busy trying to get that toy out of the rabbit’s hands. Besides, I didn’t want to tell you.’

  They hurried on in silence, each angry with his own thoughts, until they came to the house. Between the timbers of the upper storey there was white stucco. The shutters were open. They rang the bell and wondered why, if there was no housekeeper, the lower shutters had not been closed.

  ‘Try the door,’ said Hermann, and when Louis did, it opened easily enough. ‘Louis, I don’t like this.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said the Frog, still carrying his toy.

  The ceilings were low, the lintels over the doorways even lower still, the house unpretentious – quite obviously that of a merchant with shipping interests as well as others. Merely a house away from home.

  The bedroom looked out over the River Nive but by then they had noticed the stench.

  ‘Ah Nom de Jésus-Christ!’ coughed Kohler, flinging himself away to throw up his guts and rush out of the room only to bang his head and shriek at the place.

  St-Cyr threw open the windows but with the fog there was little daylight.

  He struck a match and went over to the bed. The body was that of a young man of twenty or so. The bloated face was greenish-grey and horribly distorted, a mask of agony. Decay of the internal organs had caused a froth to ooze from the lips and nostrils. He’d been hit in the right thigh by shrapnel – a Stuka perhaps or merely the flak from some battery. The wound had festered but had perhaps not been too much to bear at first. Then the gangrene had set in, the fevers, the delirium – he could see where a rag had been used to stuff his mouth and stop his cries. The thigh was a deep greenish-black and bloated terribly, the sheeting and mattress soaked with effluent. The boy had been dead for at least two or three weeks, but why had she left him here to die like this all alone?

  Why had Delphane left them to find the body if not to pin the rap of sympathizers on them?

  ‘Hermann, we are being forced into admitting we saw this one. If we do not report him, Herr Munk will think we are on the other side and wanting only to hide things. Yet if we do report the body, he will then move in on the village.’

  For a former artilleryman and one who ought to have been accustomed to seeing death in all its many forms, Hermann looked positively ill.

  ‘Delphane wins either way, Louis. If we say we found the body, the village is lost and he’s proven right. If we withhold the information even for a day, he’s still proven right about us.’

  ‘And we have so little time at our disposal.’

  ‘Could we find the guide and his daughter?’

  The warmth of fear was in Louis’s eyes. ‘How? If they are running an escape line, Hermann, they will most certainly not come to us.’

  ‘Ja, ja, I’m Gestapo. I know all about it. Our goose is being properly cooked this time.’

  ‘Hermann, the door was open, yes? Eyes will be watching to see what we do. If we leave quietly, some might think other than those of Jean-Paul and the ones he employs, if any.’

  ‘But will they take the chance of contacting us? W
hy should they?’

  Why, indeed. It was hopeless and they both knew it. Madame Buemondi had been conducting escapers through to Spain. Whether her murder had anything to do with this or not was of no consequence, and yet … and yet, a murder had been committed.

  ‘Come on,’ said Kohler. ‘Let’s find our pilot and go home.’

  ‘Paris in winter is the shits,’ muttered the Frog. ‘Me, I should like to spend the last days of my life in that woman’s cottage.’

  Listening to the bees of summer in his dreams and calculating the honey each would make as he read Baudelaire. Living on goat cheese, herbs and sausage. And water, Kohler reminded himself. Ja, ja, water. Without that there can be no life.

  6

  An icy mizzle made greyer still the gathering dusk over Paris. All along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin near the Gare de l’Est the only cars were those of the Germans, and few of them, ah yes, but not few enough.

  St-Cyr stood at the kerb waiting to cross over. Ever since arriving at Le Bourget aerodrome, he and Hermann had known they were being followed. They’d split up. There was nothing new in this, the work always shared. But Hermann, he was better at deception. Instinctively the Bavarian could tail or lose a tail better than anyone.

  The car was down the street no more than five lampposts. Beetle-black and ugly, a Citroën just like the one he’d once had. Son of a bitch! Could they not leave them alone long enough to draw breath or pass water?

  Delphane … Did he have such resources at his command? And if so, then why … why the need to tail them?

  Perhaps it was someone else? Gestapo Paris, on repeated requests from Herr Munk in Cannes? Perhaps old friends who had been associates of Jean-Paul’s during the Stavisky business? Pierre Bonny and the boys from the rue Lauriston, eh, my friend? The French Gestapo!

  Would they not leave things well enough alone and let an honest detective get on with the business at hand?

  Mercilessly the vélos-taxis with their heavy loads were pedalled or pushed through the eight centimetres of fast-freezing slush. One old horse that had escaped the Russian Front had ice so thick around its hooves, the poor creature could barely lift them. Hermann would have bullied the driver of that antiquated open carriage. The whip would have been threatened and the Hauptmann in the back told off in no uncertain terms. Ah yes. Hermann had a way with him when aroused by such passions.

  The couple kissed. The Hauptmann laughed. The girl stepped daintily down, bravely refusing to acknowledge that those same eight centimetres of slush were now rushing through the open toes of high-heeled shoes best worn in summer.

  Her pockets bulged with treasures – secreted pâté stashed into a napkin, some of the bread, a bar of precious soap or tin of anchovies. He could not find it in his heart to censure her as some would do. The coat was cheap, the dress too thin but, ah Mon Dieu, there were no young Frenchmen to take the Hauptmann’s place and likely as not her husband or lover was either in a POW camp in Germany or dead.

  The girl had a bad cough and when she passed him on the way to the entrance of the métro, he turned quickly aside and held his breath for good measure. Automatically the mind, it leapt to thoughts of the influenza, the croup, the crisis of the running nose. The maladie terrible to which the Sûreté Nationale’s petty little dictator and chief paid not the slightest concern unless personally threatened!

  St-Cyr almost wished he hadn’t turned away. He could have passed it on to Pharand. That arch little file-minded Fascist had been a boyhood friend of Jean-Paul Delphane. Another ex-choirboy. Ah yes. Singing up in the gods but singing such a tune.

  The horse started up, the slush splashed grey upon the grey. The whip Hermann would have seized flicked harshly but by some miracle of miracles, all four clods of ice suddenly broke from the hooves and the old horse stepped out lively.

  Another car had arrived, a Daimler, but held itself back from the first. He couldn’t lead them to Josette-Louise Buemondi. Was she even at her old address?

  He couldn’t have them following him everywhere.

  Dodging the bicycles and contraptious vélos, St-Cyr bolted across the street. Slipping and sliding, he darted in among the drab, bundled mass of uncaring humanity. A car started up. A car door opened. Someone blew a whistle. Someone shouted. He ran, pushing his way deeper and deeper into the crowd. He must lose them. He must not lead them to that girl but why … why should they want her? Or did they?

  Nearly out of breath, he raced into the rue du Terrage. The crowd thinned. Number 22 … 22 … He tossed a look over a shoulder, stepped between two hurrying clusters of pedestrians and eased the courtyard door shut behind him. Put the lock on and waited. Waited … Ah the chest, the lack of vitamins and minerals these days. The itching. Had he caught that young girl’s influenza? Had he?

  The courtyard was very rural – peaceful even in its times of peril. Terracotta flowerpots had held tomatoes, herbs, lettuces and cucumbers in season. Grapevines climbed the walls where the sun would be trapped. The roofs leapt up and up on all sides, bars or closed shutters on the lowest windows, but at the far end, a door exposed two oblong panes of glass.

  He started out, threw yet another look behind. Cast-iron drainpipes carried sewage down the outer walls of these older houses, but were hopelessly vulnerable in weather such as this. The one nearest the door to Number 22 had been bashed with a hammer in a fit of rage and now leaked a half-frozen pus of effluent. A bad sign if one was looking for a concierge with heart.

  The man, like Shylock in a shoebox, was huddled over his dinner, guiltily rubbing half a grey loaf of that other national curse with a handful of garlic that had been poorly crushed.

  The garlic, of course, gave one that sense of the full stomach when the bread had been eaten. Some swore it lasted nearly all day.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ demanded the concierge fiercely. ‘You’ll get nothing here! Don’t tell me my rights, monsieur. I am not Father Beaumont for nothing!’

  A defrocked priest. Ah Nom de Jésus-Christ, could nothing go right? ‘A moment of your valuable time, eh?’ snarled the Sûreté, immediately regretting the slip of manners.

  ‘A moment?’ shrilled the man, tossing the hand with the garlic. ‘Then start the meter running, my fine flic with the slush on your shoes, and while you’re at it, tell me who is going to clean the place up?’

  The beard jerked, the grey eyes were livid. There’d been a notice on the door, ah yes. Please remove the galoshes.

  Six sweaters and three pairs of trousers hid the concierge. The belt had not been sufficient and a frayed bit of rope held the last of the trousers up.

  Beaumont wore no boots, shoes or carpet slippers. Instead, his feet were wrapped in woven straw that had been stuffed with the same.

  ‘It’s warmer than anything else,’ he said testily. ‘Our ancestors crossed the glaciers with such as these.’

  Was he some kind of historian?

  Above the tiny cast-iron stove he had pinned his coal card – 25 kilos a month if one could get it. Enough perhaps to heat this one small room for about two hours a day.

  ‘This girl,’ said St-Cyr, showing him the photograph Hermann had rescued from the Gestapo Munk. ‘The last address we have is …’ He threw a look down the stairwell at some noise or other.

  ‘What’s she done now?’ hissed the man, forgetting the wad of garlic which shot across the threadbare carpet to land in the slush.

  ‘Pardon?’ offered the Sûreté, not bothering to pick the thing up. ‘You said “now”, monsieur. Please take the trouble to explain yourself.’

  The head jerked fiercely. ‘She tried to get away without paying the rent. Twice it’s happened but me,’ he tapped his head, ‘I have seen too many bare asses in this place for that, monsieur. No one secretly smuggles a few clothes outside, then tries to shoot the moon in my place while leaving all the rest of their crummy baggage behind!’

  ‘Ah, yes, the moon. And what did you do, eh?’

  Merde! Must he use the eyes of t
he bishop? ‘Me I faced her with the problem, monsieur.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You said you were going to tell the police.’

  The man nodded. Head bowed, he said, ‘That one wept when I undressed her. The moon, I said. Me, I will show you what shooting the moon is like.’

  ‘The room,’ breathed the Sûreté with barely controlled fury. ‘Take me to it at once.’

  The man was shrill. ‘Oh you needn’t look so pious, my fine Inspector. I did not fornicate with that cheater of cheats. Me, I would never do such a thing. The vows … they are still sacred.’

  It took all types to make the city what it was. ‘Where’s she gone then?’ asked St-Cyr so quietly the budgie in its disgusting cage had to cock an ear.

  Birdshit lay a centimetre deep across the little tin floor. The wires were bent, the bird in moult perhaps.

  ‘She’s gone to stay with a friend, I think,’ muttered the concierge. ‘A German perhaps. Even rats will spread their legs these days and hers was quite hairy.’

  St-Cyr experienced an almost overwhelming desire to free the bird and throw the bastard to the wolves. When he swung the counter top up and stood aside, Beaumont wolfed the bread before snatching up the garlic and stuffing it into a pocket.

  ‘You can’t leave a thing lying around these days,’ he cursed. ‘Even here the rule of law no longer exists.’

  The room was in the attic six floors above the vacant courtyard. Frost covered all but a central patch of window across which hung a dirty webbing of tattered lace.

  Both cars, still with engines running, were waiting in the street – he could just catch a glimpse of each. Not on speaking terms, then. One watching the other and both of them on to him but not inclined to step out into the cold.

  So be it, eh, my friends? There was virtually nothing in the bureau drawers. Two rolled-up pairs of heavy woollen socks, dark blue, a pair of grey tweed trousers unlined … A man’s? he wondered, dragging them out to hold them against his own. Perhaps … but he thought not. Not like the sister.